Page 25

He gets up off the bed and is gone. Over the roar of my heartbeat slamming erratically against my chest and drumming in my ears, I hear him jogging through the hall.

With shaky hands, I reach over and turn on the bedside light.

I stare at it, thinking it’s the ugliest light I’ve ever seen.

Dani brought it with the nightstands. It’s a hideous orange color and not even that cool retro-vibe orange.

This looks like a rusty type of orange. Still, it was sleek, had a nice base you could charge your phone on without an extra plug.

It is designed so that the bulb is recessed inside the metal umbrella and that is connected to a long black arm, so that you can angle the light in any direction.

I am going to buy some spray paint and paint the both of them—there is a matching one on the other nightstand—a glossy charcoal gray or maybe black.

I pull my attention away from the lamps—as well as trying to gain control of my momentary panic—because King is back with a bottle of water.

He looks a mixture of guilt and regret, but over all of that is concern.

Concern for me. He’s so good. Much too good for the likes of me.

I don’t understand any of what’s going on, but I do know I can’t stand to see that look on his face.

“Here, Sunshine. Take a drink,” he says, twisting the cap off the bottle and handing me both.

What he doesn’t do is sit on the bed. King’s on the opposite side of me, standing and bending down to hand me the water.

He’s not standing beside me. He’s not getting back in bed.

He’s awkwardly looking across the bed at me, rubbing the back of his neck, and looking as close to panicked as King will probably ever look in his life.

“I’m okay,” I whisper after taking the bottle and sipping from it.

“I’m sorry,” he says, like he has anything to apologize for.

“I’m okay,” I tell him again. Maybe if I say it enough, one of us will start to believe it.

“Shit, Gabby. I meant to go slow. I fucked up.”

“King.”

“Christ, I fucked up,” he mutters again under his breath.

“King, stop.”

He turns to look at me and his words are so earnest, the emotion so thick that it’s coming off him in waves and it guts me. I gave him this pain, this look. I warned him, but he didn’t listen and now, I’m hurting him. The last person in the world I’d ever want to hurt.

“Gabby, you’re safe with me. I would cut off my arm before I’d?—”

I don’t think. I just can’t stand the pain anymore. I somehow manage to put the water on the nightstand and then I move to King, going up on my knees on the mattress, pressing my hands against his stomach where he stands. “Stop. I know you will never hurt me. I know that. That’s not what happened.”

“I know, but I should have been gentler. I should have let you lead. Fuck! I should stop pushing you when you need time to adjust.”

“King, I asked you to kiss me. That wasn’t you pushing me,” I whisper softly.

“Sunshine—”

“It wasn’t the kiss,” I confess before he can blame himself for more of my idiocy.

“What?” he asks, understandably confused.

“It wasn’t the kiss. I was enjoying the kiss.

I wanted more of that kiss because it was so spectacular.

You know everything there is about me, King.

You know about Dom and my fucked-up decisions to try to tie him to me, despite him starting a life with Thea.

You know how I hurt and used T. You even know how I let a prospect get off watching me.

I laid everything bare for you and I did it wanting you— needing you to look at me with the same disgust as everyone else.

I wanted you to hate me, like I hated myself.

Yet, early that morning before the sun had really begun to rise, after I had already bared my soul once, and you let me have a safe place to give you more.

I told you about Trick, my dad, my feelings that I was never good enough—that there was something in me lacking.

I gave you everything. Instead of doing what I wanted, you held me.

You kissed my forehead and told me to learn to forgive myself and give myself grace to be the woman I wanted to be.

When I made the decision to keep my child, I did it knowing that jellybean was my first right step into becoming the woman that I wanted to be. ”

“Gabby …”

“I’m telling you that, because you need to know I trust you. I … care about you enough to know that you deserve better than filth like me.”

“Shut up.”

“King—”

“I’m not going to listen to it anymore. I will not allow you to keep trying to die on a damn sword.

They call it a past because it’s not in the now .

We all have a fucking past, Gabby. We all do.

It doesn’t have to define us. We shove it behind us, and we move forward.

That’s what I’m doing. I’m pushing away the mistakes I made for seeing a woman and making her in my head what I wanted and needed, marrying her, and getting shredded in the process.

That’s what I’m doing by realizing my plan of vengeance I wasted half my life on amounted to my own fucking mother being an addict and lying her ass off and me also wanting to kill a man who is a little twisted, but a good man.

A man who may have made a good father to me but will never get that chance.

So, that’s part of my past, too. But do you know what is not in my past, Gabby? ”

“What?” I breathe.

“You. You and jellybean are in my present and you’re there in such a way I want you to be in my future.

Do you think me feeling that way, I’m going to hear you tell me you were enjoying my kiss and let you continue to put yourself down and push me away?

Do I seem so stupid to you I would let that happen? ”

“It was when your hand went to the back of my neck. You held me there tightly and then moved your hold to the side. It triggered flashbacks, because well … he was behind me, and he held me there to control me and … and …” I was trying to push through to tell him, but the tightness in my chest was returning and the burn of the memories I tried to keep buried were catching ablaze.

“Then, the next time I kiss you, I’ll be careful where my hands are, and I’ll make you keep your eyes open. That way you know the man holding you is a man you trust.”

“You’re sure?”

“Oh, yeah, Sunshine. I’m positive.”

“We could try now,” I whisper, eyes dropping down, heat hitting my cheeks, and almost afraid to breathe. I feel like I’m on the edge of a cliff and I’m jumping with no safety net.

He steps into me. I go down off my knees, sliding back on the bed.

He sits down and I squeak as he lifts me onto his lap.

I’m straddling him, our chests pressed together.

His hands go on each side of me, fingers pressed gently into my ribs.

He’s smiling at me, and I find the courage to give a small one back.

“Are you going to keep those eyes open for me, Sunshine?”

I nod.

“Good girl. Now, give me your right hand.” I frown but do as he instructs.

He slowly takes my hand and holds it as our fingers slide between one another, linking into a hold that has never felt better.

He rests them in my lap. “Keep them right here and if you need a break for any reason, or you just want to call a foul on the play and stop the game, you squeeze my hand, and I’ll stop. We have a deal?”

“Did you just make our kiss a basketball analogy?” I whisper, my lips fighting an honest to goodness grin. How does he do that?

“Football.”

“Oh, I’m from Kentucky. We’re a basketball state.”

He shakes his head, his eyes twinkling. “Give me your lips, Sunshine. Let’s see if I can make this good for you.”

I lean into him so he can take my mouth—which he does slowly and gently. Then he sets about making my first kiss in a really long time a good one. In this, he failed. It was a great kiss. So much more than good that it was laughable.

And through it all. He held my hand.